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THE SUPEEMACT 



OBLIGATION OF CONSCIENCE: 



CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE 



OPPOSITE EEEOES OF ROMANISM AND 
PROTESTANTISM. 




THE 



REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D., 

ECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION, NEW YORK 



NEW YOEK: 
DANIEL DANA, JR., 381 BROADWAY. 



I860. 








:/m 



4€ 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, 

By Daniel Dana, Jr., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 

District of New York. 



Billin & Brother, Printers and Stereotypers, 20 North William Street. 



PREFACE. 



Soon after the return of the Eev. Dr. Forbes from the Koman 
communion to his old home, I delivered the following discourse 
on the Supremacy of Conscience. The publication of it was at 
the time desired by several persons who heard it ; but with 
every disposition to gratify the wishes of friends from whom I 
have received nothing but kindness, I was yet reluctant to 
publish the discourse, especially in the present temper of the 
public mind, and not exhibit, more distinctly and fully than its 
design allowed, those divine laws without the observance of 
which liberty of conscience is only another name for licentious- 
ness. I therefore reserved the discourse until a suitable opportu- 
nity occurred for following it with another on the Obligation of 
Conscience. With this natural sequel to the first discourse, I 
felt quite free to comply with the wishes that had been kindly 
expressed for its publication. 

I have two other reasons for publication : The one is that as 
I am willing now as always to protest against the errors of the 
Roman Church, so am I desirous always, and especially at this 
present time, to enter my humble but earnest protest against that 
fanatical spirit which has always been the assailant of our Church, 
and which now threatens the constitution of our country. The 
other is that, considering loose and erroneous views of consci- 



ence to be the main spring and support of this fanatical 
spirit, I wish to see some attempt made to counteract them. I 
am deeply conscious, indeed, of my inability to treat the sub- 
ject to my own satisfaction, and much more to the satisfaction 
of the many acute and vigorous minds on whose sympathies I 
flatter myself I may count to some extent, but whose traditions, 
I fear, render them indisposed to accept several of the posi- 
tions which I have thought it necessary to take ; but I thought 
it quite possible that my humble essay might, in the course of 
Divine Providence, be the means of drawing out others, in the 
same direction, who are better qualified to give the subject the 
profound consideration which the times demand. 

The reader who is acquainted with the admirable lectures of 
Bishop Sanderson will see that I have followed him not only 
in his general outlines, but in several particulars, most of 
which are specified in the notes. I confess that I found it diffi- 
cult to write on Conscience without being indebted to this famous 
casuist ; and if what I have said shall have the effect to excite 
inquiry and demand for his writings on the subject, I shall 
think my own labors amply rewarded. 

The discourses have been in part re-written since they were 
preached ; a circumstance which I deem it proper to mention, in 
order that I may be held alone responsible for their sentiments. 

S. S. 

New York, January, 1860. 



THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 



ST. JAMES IV., 12. 

" There is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy : who 
art thou that judgest another ?" 

In the preceding verse the apostle exhorts the 
Christians of his day to refrain from passing rash 
judgments on the persons and actions of their brethren. 
In order to perceive the force of the exhortation, we 
must bear in mind the differences which had sprung 
up in the early Christian Church, in regard to the 
Mosaic ceremonies, and which are often either tacitly 
or openly alluded to in the writings of the New 
Testament. " Speak not evil one of another, brethren." 
So far, the exhortation is general, such as all persons 
would take to themselves, and acknowledge to convey 
a wholesome admonition ; and such, therefore, as is 
fitted to conciliate, and not to repel, those whom the 
apostle wished to rebuke. " He that speaketh evil of 
his brother and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of 
the law and judgeth the law." Here the inspired 
writer passes from evil speaking in general to that 
particular kind of evil speaking which flows from rash 



— 6 — 

judgment. Now, from St. Paul's discourse on this 
subject,* it appears that they, who refused to be bound 
by the Mosaic ceremonies, were apt to speak contempt- 
uously of their opponents, and that they who insisted 
on the obligation of these ceremonies were the persons 
who were addicted to rash judgment. In these words, 
then, the Judaizing Christians would see that they 
were aimed at, though they were not expressly named ; 
for they were not content to observe the ceremonies 
themselves, but they condemned their brethren for not 
observing them, although they were not enjoined by 
the law of Christ. Consequently, as St. James here 
argues, they did not merely speak evil against their 
brethren and judge their brethren, but they spake evil 
against the law of Christ and judged the law of 
Christ, arraigning it as defective in not requiring an 
observance of the Mosaic ceremonies. And thus, as 
the apostle further argues, they raised themselves from 
subjects, or doers of the law, to the throne of the 
Judge, and virtually reviled the law and usurped the 
prerogative of Almighty God. 

The whole passage is a model of public pastoral 
reproof, naming no persons or parties, and containing 
no invidious reflections ; but advancing general propo- 
sitions which carry conviction to the minds of the mis- 
taken party, and in such a way as to abate their preju- 
dices, without flattering the pride of their opponents. 

My present object, however, is to direct your atten- 
tion to the concluding passage, " There is one law- 
giver who is able to save and to destroy : who 
art thou that judgest another?" The apostle 
had just observed, that they who pass rash judg- 

* Rom. xiv. 



ment on their brethren for not observing things 
which Christ had not commanded, usurp the office 
of God. In order to evince the folly and wickedness 
of this rash judgment, he next declares that, " There 
is one lawgiver," viz., God. Now this argument would 
have little or no force, if it merely meant that God 
was the one lawgiver, in the way of eminence or dis- 
tinction above others. The meaning plainly is, that 
God is the one lawgiver, in an exclusive sense : i. e., 
in a sense in which no human being is or can be. For 
the apostle adds : " Who art thou that judgest 
another V A question which is equivalent to a dis- 
tinct and strong affirmation, that no man has a right 
to judge the conscience of another ; that this is the sole 
prerogative of Almighty God ; and that as He is, the 
only judge of the conscience, so is He the only law- 
giver : in other words, that all those laws which bind 
the conscience, derive their binding authority from 
God alone. 

This is also evident from that which the apostle 
adds as a further support of his argument, viz., that 
the one lawgiver to whom he refers is able to save 
and to destroy. For this ability, in its full sense, can- 
not be affirmed of any human lawgiver. The power 
of human governors is limited to this world ; and it is 
the power of God alone which can bestow those 
rewards, and punishments with which an immortal 
being is chiefly concerned. 

God alone, then, as this holy apostle teaches us, has 
authority to bind laws directly on the conscience. The 
parent has authority over his child, the State over its 
citizens, and the Church over her members ; but the 
parent, the State, and the Church derive from God 



whatever authority they have to enact laws which 
oblige the conscience ; whereas, the laws of God de- 
rive their binding force and efficacy from none other, 
but are directly and immediately obligatory on the 
conscience. 

That God alone has this direct power over the 
conscience may also be inferred from reason. For he 
alone who knows the inward springs and movements 
of the conscience, can prescribe laws to the conscience ; 
since the law cannot rule or determine in matters 
which are beyond the cognizance of the lawgiver. 
But God alone, who " searches the hearts of men," 
knows the inward springs and movements of the con- 
science ; and therefore, all laws which oblige the 
conscience must flow from the fountain of His divine 
authority. Hence it is that human laws, while they 
can compel men to an outward conformity, have no 
power of their own to bind their thoughts and affec- 
tions ; as we see exemplified, not only in the sufferings 
of Christian martyrs, but also in the lives of some good 
and great men among the heathen, who have main- 
tained their integrity in opposition to the cruelty of 
tyrants and " the madness of the people," because they 
knew that human power could reach the body only, 
and not the soul. To the same effect are the words of 
our blessed Lord : u Fear not them which kill the 
body, and after that have no more that they can do, 
but fear Him, which, after He hath killed, hath power 
to cast into hell : yea, I say unto you, fear Him." As 
if He had said : Human governors have, by God's per- 
mission, power over the bodies of men, but over their 
souls and consciences they have no power ; they cannot 
impose laws and penalties which reach to the inner 



man ; God alone has power over the whole man ; He 
alone can punish the soul as well as the body, and 
condemn the whole man, soul and body, to eternal 
punishment. Therefore fear Him. 

The same may be inferred from the nature of con- 
science, which intervenes between God and the will 
of all mankind,. So that it may be truly said of the 
conscience of every man, that it is inferior to God 
alone, and knows no superior on earth. To seek to 
dethrone it from this supremacy is to invade the cita- 
del of heaven.* To substitute an outward authority 
in its stead, or to arrogate the right to bind it by laws 
and commands of direct and immediate obligation, is 
an attempt to rob God of His glory and to usurp His 
prerogative. 

The laws of God which bind the conscience, are 
both inward and outward. The inward law is that 
written in the heart, and consists in those notions of 
truth and duty which are discoverable by reason, and 

* Bishop Sanderson (to the fourth of whose lectures "De Obligatione 
Conscienti^ Oxonii in Schola Theologica habitae, Anno Domini, 
MDCXLVII," I am indebted in great part for the above exposition of 
the text,) remarks: "Memorabile est Maximiliani primi Imperatoris quod 
legimus dictum illud, Conscientiis dominari velle est arcem cceli invadere!" 
A noble apothegm, and worthy of the man who abolished the exec- 
rable tribunal known as "Judicium occultum Westphaliae," and called 
in German " Geheim Gericht." The modes of proceeding used by this 
court were the most tremendous that can be imagined. The judges were 
unknown, and their meetings shrouded with darkness and mystery. When 
cited by them it was next to impossible for a victim to escape. If he at- 
tended their mysterious summons, he probably fell by their sentence, and 
summary execution ; if he was desperate enough to attempt contumacy or 
flight, he was sure to be assassinated, whether guilty or innocent, the abet- 
tors of the court being sworn to destroy such offenders by whatever means 
they could find practicable. (See New Biogr. Diet., sub voce, London, 1792.) 
For one such saying, and one such deed, let the man's vices be forgotten 
and his name remembered ! 



10 



are known and acknowledged of all men. The out- 
ward law is that which is revealed to us in the Holy 
Scriptures, or made known to us from without by- 
means of what ministry soever God has appointed for 
the purpose. Sometimes the inward law is called sub- 
jective, being, as it were, impressed on the very being 
of him who is subject to it ; and the outward law is 
called ohjective, because it is no part of our inward 
being, but is presented to us as an object out of our- 
selves. In both cases, however, the law is a different 
thing from the conscience, and is intended for its 
guidance. In both cases, also, it is conscience which 
governs us, in the one case by the inward, in the other 
by the outward law. But conscience, whether it govern 
us by a law discoverable in the heart, or by a law 
manifested from without, is equally supreme. In the 
Litter case the Holy Scriptures are the chief rule of 
conscience, and the Church is the informant and min- 
ister of this rule , but neither the Scripture nor the 
Church was ever designed by our Maker to become its 
substitute. 

These remarks, warranted, as I suppose, by our text, 
may be condensed in the two following propositions : — 

1st. The conscience of each particular Christian, is, 
under God, the supreme governor of his own moral 
actions. 

2d. The conscience of each particular Christian is 
directly accountable to God, and obliged to obey the 
rule which God has given it for its direction. 

Before, however, I make any application of these 
principles, I beg leave, at the hazard of repetition, to 
explain more distinctly and fully what I understand to 
be the nature and office of conscience. 



— 11 — 

By conscience, then, I understand that power or 
faculty of the mind by which we determine our con- 
duct in moral matters ; that is, matters of right and 
wrong. This faculty is superior to the other faculties 
of the mind, inasmuch as it aims at higher ends, and 
is capable of summoning the will and the reason to 
their performance. But this is not what I now intend 
by the supremacy of conscience. For when I say that 
conscience is supreme, I mean that every man in gen- 
eral, and every Christian in particular, has the supreme 
control and determination of his own moral conduct 
on his direct responsibility to his Maker. Not that 
any Christian is able to govern himself aright by his 
own strength. No ; I suppose that God gives him the 
grace of His Holy Spieit — the light of His divine 
Word, and the ministry of His Church. All these 
aids and succors are indispensable to the Christian in 
order to the just government of his moral conduct. 
But I mean that after all these aids and succors are 
conferred on him, the government of his conduct ulti- 
mately depends on himself. Whatever helps and ad- 
vantages our Creator bestows on us for guiding and 
keeping us in the way of life, He still devolves on us 
the ultimate responsibility of choosing and determin- 
ing our own conduct. " See, I have set before you 
this day life and good, and death and evil ; in that I 
have commanded thee this day to love the Lord thy 
God, to walk in His ways and to keep His command- 
ments and His statutes and His judgments. . . 
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, 
that I have set before you life and death ; blessing and 
cursing ; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy 
seed may live ; that thou may est love the Loed thy 



— 12 — 

God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that 
thou may est cleave unto Him ; for He is thy life I" 
This choice and determination is the office of con- 
science ; made so by the very constitution of human 
nature ; so that no man can delegate the office of con- 
science to another, or admit a substitute in its place 
without debasing his moral nature and forfeiting his 
dignity as an accountable creature. To suppose that 
God has made us accountable creatures, and holds us 
accountable to himself for our actions, and that He 
has at the same time erected a power outside of our- 
selves, to take the place of conscience and to act as its 
substitute, is to suppose a contradiction ; for the sup- 
position implies that God, at one and the same time, 
both makes the man accountable and unmakes him. 

If it be said that God by His prophets or apostles, 
or other delegated ministers, governs the members of 
His Church, the answer is that God governs us by 
enabling us to govern ourselves. I do not deny, but, 
on the contrary, firmly maintain, that human laws, en- 
acted by competent authority, so far as they are agree- 
able to, or do not contravene the Word of God, are 
binding on the conscience ; binding not of themselves, 
but in virtue of that divine authority into which they 
can be resolved. But what I say is, that our submis- 
sion to Church authority, our obedience to rules and 
canons, must be chosen and voluntary, and such as our 
conscience approves and prompts us to render. And 
the reason is, that God's government of His Church is 
not coercive and compulsory, like the governments of 
this world, but of a moral and spiritual nature. Its 
sanctions are promises and threats, which are to be ful- 
filled in a future life, and which leave us free to choose 



13 



and determine, albeit at our peril, our behavior and 
conduct in this life. It is of the essence of God's 
moral government that it is adapted to reasonable 
creatures who have liberty to choose or refuse the 
good. The law written on the heart is not like a me- 
chanical force impressed on brute matter and operating 
by a physical necessity, but it is the remains of that 
light which God originally infused into the mind of 
man, that the conscience of every man might apply it 
to the government pf his moral actions. And now that 
this inward light is dimmed and obscured by our sins 
and evil customs, the revealed law is given and infused 
into our hearts to supply its defects and to answer the 
same end: not to move and direct us by an outward 
and physical necessity, but to enable us, as free and ac- 
countable agents, so to govern ourselves as to secure the 
approbation, and to avoid the displeasure, of our Al- 
mighty Creator and Judge. 

Kevealed religion, therefore, makes no change in the 
nature and office of conscience: only by shedding on 
it greater light and knowledge, it enables it to act 
with a higher discernment and a loftier purpose. 
Neither the words of prophets and apostles, as they 
are contained in the holy and inspired Scriptures, nor, 
with reverence be it said, even the words of our bless- 
ed Lord, as they fell from His divine lips, are designed 
to deprive us of the power of governing ourselves. On 
the contrary, they suppose that we have this power, and 
they set before us the way to govern ourselves, the 
path wherein we are to walk in order to the attain- 
ment of eternal life. They speak so as to convince the 
reason but not to overpower it. They command and 
argue, persuade and entreat ; but they leave it to us, 



— 14 — 

after hearing their commands and persuasions, to deter- 
mine and to act. In a word, they are not a substitute 
for conscience, but a rule for its guidance and direc- 
tion, and a law to oblige it. 

That you may the better see the design of these re- 
marks, permit me to state briefly the error which they 
are intended to cover. It is this : that the supremacy 
of conscience is peculiar to the system of natural 
religion, and that under a system of revealed religion, 
an outward authority is meant to take the place of 
conscience. Conscience, it is said, was the proper 
guide for the heathen, and they did well to follow it; 
but since the Incarnation of our blessed Lord, it is an 
outward and not an inward guide, to whose supremacy 
we Christians must bow ; and since our blessed Lord 
has ascended into heaven and left His Church to repre- 
sent Him on earth, the voice of the Church is the sub- 
stitute for the voice of conscience ; the supremacy of 
the Church, (and by the favorers of this hypothesis 
the Church is virtually the See of Koine,) abolishes 
and takes the place of the supremacy of conscience ; 
and to this external authority every particular Chris- 
tian is bound directly and implicitly to submit. 

It is now more than thirteen years since in discours- 
ing to you from this very text, I took occasion to read 
to you a passage from an eminent author, in which this 
doctrine of the substitution of the voice of the Church 
for the voice of conscience is distinctly avowed.* 

* I annex the passage from Dr. Newman's Development of Christian 
Doctrine, and the substance of the remarks, with which, on the occasion 
referred to, I ventured to accompany it. 

" Moreover, it is to be borne in mind that, as the essence of all religion 
is authority and obedience, so the distinction between Natural Religion and 



— 15 — 

That author, before the publication of the passage, gave 
in his adhesion to the Church of Rome. The circum- 
stance has been recalled to my mind by a fact of recent 
occurrence : a distinguished clergyman of our Church, 
who some ten years ago withdrew from its communion, 
and submitted himself to the See of Rome, has re- 
Revealed lies in this, that the one has a subjective authority, and the other 
an objective. Revelation consists in the manifestation of the Invisible Divine 
Power, or in the substitution of the voice of a Lawgiver for the voice of 
conscience. The supremacy of conscience is the essence of natural religion ; 
the supremacy of Apostle or Pope, or Church, or Bishop, is the essence of 
revealed ; and when such external authority is taken away, the mind falls 
back again upon that inward guide which it possessed even before Revela- 
tion was vouchsafed. Thus, what conscience is in the system of nature, 
such is the voice of Scripture, or of the Church, or of the Holy See, as we 
may determine it, in the system of Revelation. It may be objected, indeed, 
that conscience is not infallible ; it is true ; but still. it is ever to be obeyed. 
And this is just the prerogative which controversialists assign to the See of 
St. Peter ; it is not in all cases infallible, it may err beyond its special pro- 
vince, but it has even in all cases a claim on our obedience. * • * * 
And as obedience to conscience, even supposing conscience ill-informed, tends 
to the improvement of our moral nature, and ultimately of our knowledge, 
so obedience to our ecclesisatical superior may subserve our growth in illu- 
mination and sanctity, even though he should command what is extreme 
or inexpedient, or what is external to his legitimate province." — Newmarts 
Essay on Development, p. 124. London ed. 

A more astute defence of the blind obedience which is the boast of the 
Jesuits, and makes every one of them a corpse (perinde ac cadaver, is Loyola's 
expression) to be moved by the will of his superior, never before distilled 
from mortal pen. Let us examine it. 

" The distinction between Natural Religion and Revealed, lies in this, that 
the one has a subjective authority, and the other an objective." Divested of 
its scholastic form of expression, and reduced to plain and proper English, 
the meaning of the author is, that the distinction between Natural Religion 
and Revealed is, that under the one a man is the governor of his own 
actions, and that under the other he is governed by a power exterior to 
himself. Here, I apprehend, is the prime fallacy of the argument, and it 
consists in overlooking the fact that the light of Divine Revelation, though 
it proceed from without, is yet infused into the mind, and when so infused 
becomes as much an inward principle of action as the light innate. It would 
therefore, I think', be a more correct statement of the distinction between 
Natural and Revealed Religion, to say that under the one man governs him- 
self by the light innate, i. e., the light of nature, and under the other by 
the light infused, i. e., the light of Divine Revelation. 

" Revelation consists in the manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power, or 



16 



cently had the courage and magnanimity to acknowl- 
edge his error. And the remarkable feature of the 
case is that the reason which he has assigned for aban- 
doning the Church of Rome, is his experience of abuses 
growing directly out of the very error we have been 
considering : viz. — the substitution of the voice of the 

in the substitution of the voice of a lawgiver for the voice of conscience." But 
nature as well as revelation is a manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power. 
Why, then, should conscience live under the one manifestation and expire 
under the other ? It had, I think, been more correct to say that Revelation 
consists in the supernatural manifestation of the Invisible Divine Power, or 
in illuminating the conscience with a light above and beyond what is fur. 
nished by Natural Religion. In this way of statement, it would be seen 
that conscience (always obliged by God) is, under both systems, equally 
supreme in governing us ; only that in the one case it governs us by the light 
of Nature, and in the other by the light of Divine Revelation. 

" The supremacy of conscience is the essence of Natural Religion ; the 
supremacy of Apostle, or Pope, or Church, is the essence of Revealed ; 
and when such external authority is taken away, the mind falls back again 
upon that inward guide which it possessed, even before Revelation was 
vouchsafed." If the foregoing strictures are correct, we ought to say that the 
supremacy of conscience is the essence both of Natural Religion and 
Revealed ; only in the one case conscience governs us by the light innate, 
otherwise called the light of nature, and in the other case it governs us by 
that infused and supernatural light which proceeds from Divine Revelation ; 
and that when this infused supernatural light is extinguished or withdrawn, 
the mind falls back on that innate or natural light which it had before Reve- 
lation was vouchsafed. 

" Thus, what conscience is in the system of nature, such is the voice of 
Scripture, or of the Church, or of the Holy See, as we may determine it, in 
the system of Revelation." On the contrary, I would say, that what con- 
science is in the system of nature, it is the same in the system of Revelation ; 
always obliging us and obliged itself by God ; and that the distinction is in 
the rule by which the conscience proceeds ; which, in the system of nature is 
the light of nature, and in the system of Revelation is the light of Revelation, 
whether conveyed to us by the Scripture, by the Church, or by what 
ministry soever God has appointed for the purpose. 

" It may be objected that conscience is not infallible : it is true ; but still it 
is ever to be obeyed. And this is just the prerogative which controversialists 
assign to the See of St. Peter ; it is not in all cases infallible ; it may err be- 
yond its special province ; but it has even in all cases a claim on our obedience.' 



17 



Church for the voice of conscience. So that Dr. Forbes, 
after a ten years' experience, gives us the results, as 
they forced themselves on his observation, of that sys- 
tem of blind obedience to which the author of " The 
Development of Christian Doctrine," had led the way. 
" The supremacy of conscience," said Dr. Newman, in 

The inference which the reader is expected to draw is, that if the Roman 
See be substituted by God in the place of conscience, then are we bound to 
obey it even if in error, for the reason that it is safer to follow an erroneous 
conscience than to act against it. True on the supposition ; but the supposi- 
tion itself is, I apprehend, confused and sophistical. For there can be no 
such thing as a substitute for conscience ; the conscience itself is supreme ; 
and the man must of necessity, and in the exercise of his own judgment, ac- 
cept or reject (in the case supposed) the decision of the Roman See as his 
rule of action. To deprive himself of his rationality and humanity, to sink 
into some lower order of being, a brute, a corpse, or a staff, so as to be moved 
and impelled by a power exterior to himself is simply impossible ; and the 
attempt of a reasonable creature to attain to such a state of passivity can 
only result, so far at least as I can comprehend the movement, from a crazy 
jumble of fanaticism and folly. 

Now comes the climax. "And as obedience to conscience, even suppos- 
ing conscience ill-informed, tends to the improvement of our moral nature, 
and ultimately of our knowledge, so obedience to our ecclesiastical superior 
may subserve our growth in illumination and sanctity, even though he 
should command what is extreme, or inexpedient, or teach what is external 
to his legitimate province." Daintily expressed ! But how comes the subject 
to know or believe that his ecclesiastical superior has commanded what is 
"extreme," or "inexpedient," or "external to his legitimate province?" 
And if the command has been so " extreme" as to put vice for virtue, wrong 
for right, how comes the man to discern the foulness of the command, and 
to hate and reject it, as he must if he have remaining in him a spark of hu- 
manity ? Evidently because he applies, and cannot but apply, the light of 
his own mind to determine the moral character of the act proposed. In 
other words conscience — which is the man himself thinking, willing, and 
acting in matters of a moral nature — reviews the command of the ecclesias- 
tical superior, compares it with its own light, innate or infused, and judges 
it by that light. ' Thus the conscience asserts its own supremacy, and the 
man — as man — cannot perform the superior's command without having first 
obeyed or disobeyed the dictate of his own conscience. Obedience, there- 
fore, to our ecclesiastical superior, in order to subserve our growth in illumi- 
nation and sanctity, must have the previous and concurrent sanction and 
2 



— 18 — 

the ardor of his first love, " is the essence of natural, 
as the supremacy of Apostle, or Pope, or Church, or 
bishop, is the essence of revealed religion." " This 
conviction," says Dr. Forbes, the conviction, namely, 
of the supremacy of the See of Rome, "I have 
not been able to sustain in face of the fact that 
by it the natural rights of man and all individual liber- 
ty must be sacrificed ; nor only so, but the private con- 
science often violated, and one forced by silence at 
least to acquiesce in what is opposed to moral truth 
and justice." 

This is a statement of fact and not of doctrine ; the 
testimony of a reliable witness, founded on his personal 
observation and experience, for a period of ten years, 
in the very heart of the Roman Church. And the 
point of his testimony is, if I understand him, that he 
found himself disquieted and embarrassed by the 
claims of two conflicting principles, the supremacy of 
the See of Rome and the supremacy of conscience. 

approbation of conscience ; for if rendered blindly and without regard to 
conscience, it is not obedience in the proper sense of the word ; and if in op- 
position to the dictates and remonstrances of conscience, it involves a de- 
parture from moral truth and justice, and opens the way for every species 
of turpitude and vice. 

The statement that obedience to conscience, even supposing conscience ill-in- 
formed, tends to the improvement of our moral nature, etc., is to be taken 
with some qualifications. Thus much is certain, that it is safer to obey an erro- 
neous conscience (so it be honest) than to act against it. But, admitting the 
alleged improvement, the reason is that conscience is God's vicegerent in the 
soul ; that, however ill-informed, it can never, except through our own fault, 
cease to be good and honest ; and that it cannot from its nature teach what 
is foreign to its legitimate province. Not one of these things can be 
affirmed of our ecclesiastical superior; for he is God's vicegerent out of the 
soul, and not in it ; he may be not only ill-informed, but dishonest and 
depraved, without any fault of ours ; and he may teach what is foreign to 
his legitimate province. The argument, therefore, from the one obedience to 
the other is unsound, and the conclusion false. 



— 19 — 

Supremacy on the part of the ruler implies submis- 
sion on the part of the subject. If the supremacy is 
absolute, the submission must be without 'reserve or 
condition. The one is necessary to the other ; both 
together form one essence, for " the essence of all 
religion is authority and obedience." If, then, the ab- 
solute supremacy of the See of Home is of the essence 
of Revealed Religion, an unreserved submission to 
that See is the sum total of all Christian virtues. The 
rights, liberty and conscience of the Christian are, of 
necessity, merged in this one virtue of submission to 
the See of Rome. He has no rights, except such as 
the See of Rome consents to recognize. He has no 
liberty to think or act, except as that See allows or 
directs. He has no conscience, no rule of conscience, 
I mean, except such as that See prescribes ; and as 
for conscience, considered as that power of the- soul 
which is obliged directly by the law of God, and ac- 
counts directly to Him for the observance of that law, 
there is no such thing in his creed, (which holds him 
directly accountable to the See of Rome,) and as far 
as his creed can accomplish the end there must be no 
such thing in his nature. Every movement of his soul 
towards a measure of right and liberty which the 
Roman See may not concede, every conviction of truth 
and duty which it does not approve, is rebellion in 
thought, and to be sternly repressed, lest it issue in re- 
bellion in act. For the most part, the system works 
smoothly enough, for the submission, as a general rule, 
is unreserved and implicit ; and then the Church is dis- 
creet and merciful in the exercise of her authority. But 
if the submission be reserved or qualified ; if the voice 
of Nature (speaking, it may be, from a parent's heart) 



— 20 — 

claims rights which the Church refuses to concede ; if 
reason suo'orests that the Law of Cheist and His 
Church, the adequate rule and measure of Christian 
liberty, may not in every particular harmonize with 
the law of the confessional ; and if conscience assert 
its prerogative, as it sometimes will, and permit neither 
Bishop nor Pope to stand between itself arid its God, 
terrible is the conflict ! Terrible, but most unequal ; 
for what can an individual accomplish against a system 
— the wonder of the world — which brings the collected 
force and cunning appliances of ages to bear on him 
and to keep him in subjection? For one who resists its 
strength, .breaks through its meshes, and vindicates to 
the bitter end the supremacy of his conscience, how 
.many, exhausted by the struggle, seek relief from its 
secret perplexities and sorrows, by a profounder sub- 
mission to authority, and the more abject adoption of a 
criterion of "moral truth and justice" which a healthy 
conscience would reject ! 

" If the light that is within thee be darkness," said 
our blessed Saviour, " how great is that darkness !" 
It matters not how the conscience is extinguished, 
whether it be by a course of sin rendering it incapable 
of discernment between right and wrong, or by a 
debasing sophistry that leads men to substitute an 
outward authority in its place : the result, in one re- 
spect, is the same — intense darkness to the soul. The 
man who surrenders his conscience, who deliberately 
and on principle confesses that conscience is not his 
guide ; who deliberately and on principle devotes him- 
self to a course of blind obedience to the mandates of 
his superior, this man has effectually put out the light 
of his soul ; and to him, as well as to the man who has 



21 



seared his conscience by inveterate sin, we may apply 
the words, " If the light within thee be darkness, how 
great is that darkness I" 

No such doctrine was ever taught by our Lord and 
His apostles as this substitution of authority for con- 
science. The Church that holds their doctrine in trust 
for the salvation of man, fears not to recognize the 
conscience of every Christian as the representative and 
vicegerent of God within him, clothed with supreme 
power over his moral actions, and accountable for the 
exercise of its power to God alone. The system that 
denies the supremacy of conscience is the growth of a 
later age ; and to understand its operation, we must 
look to the power that wields it. 

That infallibility which Catholic theologians ascribe 
to the Universal Church, and limit in its exercise to the 
essentials of Christian faith and duty, is assumed by the 
modern partisans of the Church of Rome, to be unlim- 
ited and absolute, and to be virtually vested in the See 
of Rome ; so as to make the decrees and definitions of 
this See to be, both theoretically and practically, parts 
of the essential faith and morals of Christianity ; and to 
make its authority, practically, the ground of belief in 
all points of religion and morality, and the source of all 
discipline. This power, emanating from Rome as a 
centre, furnished with an inexhaustible magazine of de- 
crees and definitions, rules and directions, and acting 
through the instrumentality of a trained and extensively 
ramified priesthood, is enabled to bring its whole weight, 
for good or for evil, on every individual that owns alle- 
giance to it. Escape from it on the part of the indi- 
vidual, whatever be his secret doubts and distrust, 
is ordinarily impossible. His soul is mapped out; 



22 



every point in it has been dotted down and studied 
with curious precision, until it is better known to 
the directing power than to its owner ; all questions that 
can possibly arise as to the right of occupancy are anti- 
cipated and provided for, and a refined casuistry comes 
in as the ally of authority : to resist their combined 
influence is not in human nature ; so that the man who 
would maintain the supremacy of his conscience and 
act on its honest dictates, has no other way than boldly 
to burst asunder the ties that bind him to the antag- 
onist system, and resolutely renounce the principle that 
upholds it — the supremacy of the See of Rome. Fail- 
ing this, the only alternative consistent with the peace 
of his soul, is to resign himself to a course of blind 
obedience, and to become as passive as clay in the 
hands of the potter. 

It is therefore, I think, no exaggeration to say, that 
the voice of the Roman See, in the practical working 
of its system, is made to be the substitute for the voice 
of conscience. Both the doctrine and the fact appear 
to be the legitimate consequence of the theory of 
infallibility as understood and acted on in that 
communion. For the theory, if logically carried out, 
annihilates the conscience;* and whether logically 



* If any one doubt this, let him weigh the following passage in Loyola's 
Letter on Obedience : * * " Perit Celebris ilia Obedientiae caecae 
simplicitas, cum apud nos ipsos in quaestionem vocamus, recte ne praecipia- 
tur, an secus : atque etiam fortasse damnamus Superiorem quod ea mandet, 
quae nobis non ita jucunda sunt : perit humilitas quoniam etsi ex altera parte 
paremus, ex altera tamen nosmetipsos Superiori praeferimus." That is, 
" There is an end of the glorious simplicity of blind obedience, when we 
question with ourselves whether the command of our Superior be right or 
not, and perhaps even blame him for laying on us commands not so pleasant 
to us : an end of humility [also] since though on the one hand we obey, yet 



— 23 — 

carried out or not, it naturally begets the attempt to 
adjust the movements of every man's understanding 
and will, in every particular, to the precise definitions 
and prescriptions of an outward and supposed infallible 
judge, instead of encouraging him to follow, under the 
counsel and instruction, indeed, of his spiritual guides, 
but on his direct responsibility to his Maker, the great 
principles and precepts of duty which God has deliver- 
ed. Such an attempt, in proportion as it succeeds, 
turns the man from a moral agent into a machine. 
Obedience, in the proper sense of the word, it banishes 
from the Church of God, and substitutes in its place a 
mere conformity to physical law, which is a property 
of brutes and of inanimate matter, but not of reason, 
nor of men considered as reasonable creatures.* To 



on the other we put ourselves above our Superior." The acute founder of 
the Jesuits saw plainly enough that the two principles — the supremacy of 
the Pope, and the supremacy of the conscience — could not co-exist, and that 
the one could only flourish on the ruins of the other. The conscience must 
either be supreme or die ; for if it suggest even a doubt or question on the 
Superior's command, it sits in judgment on it, and thus the individual, as 
Loyola says, sets himself above his Superior. So that, logically, we must 
take our choice between a blind submission to absolute infallibility and a 
total extinction of conscience ; or an assertion of the supremacy of conscience 
and a total rejection of absolute infallibility. 

* Obedience, in the proper sense of the word, is not mere conformity to 
law ; for we never speak of the obedience of ants, or bees, or brutes of any 
description — which however, conform with unerring precision to the laws of 
their being — but it is the conformity of a reasonable creature to law, and 
reason supposes choice, reflection, and judgment. Conformity to law is 
indispensable to mechanism, and is enough for outward regimen ; but it is 
obedience in the proper sense of the word which qualifies a probationary 
creature for that service of God, which is perfect freedom, and fits him for the 
employments of a higher sphere. Mere conformity to law, without discre- 
tion or forethought, makes good soldiers for an earthly chieftain ; but to 
form soldiers of Christ on the same principle, is to mistake figure for reality, 
and to turn the grace of God into compulsion. 



— 24 — 

use the favorite illustrations of the greatest admirers 
and supporters of the system, the man becomes as a 
corpse or a staff in executing the will of his superiors ; 
having no judgment of his own, but ready to follow 
their directions with a blind submission. And while 
the dominant party in the Roman Church sanction 
this theory of infallibility, an infallibility which is as- 
sumed to be absolute, and so vested in the successor of 
St. Peter, that whatever he decrees ex cathedra becomes 
in virtue of his decree an essential point of faith or 
morals, and which is applied in practice to the minute 
regulation of the thoughts and deeds of private life; 
while they give countenance to those societies in which 
the principle of blind obedience, as it is absurdly called, 
is religiously adopted, and hold them up to the emula- 
tion of the faithful as models of the Christian life,* 

* The best authorities in the Roman Church define obedience to be a 
moral virtue, which renders the mind prompt to comply with the will of a 
lawful Superior, and to perform his commands to the full ; and very con- 
sistently with this definition they make the first condition of obedience to be 
that it shall be Mind and neither look at the defects of a Superior, nor ex- 
amine the reasons of his precepts. " Obedientia," say the Salamancan 
fathers, "est virtus moralis quae reddit animum promptum ad obtemperan- 
dum legitimo Superiori, ej usque jussa adimplenda." And of the four con- 
ditions of a perfect obedience, they make the first to be " Quod sit caeca turn 
ad inspiciendos Superioris defectus, turn ad rationes praecepti scrutandas." 
Observe it is the will of the lawful superior; not his will in things indifferent, 
not his godly admonitions and directions, but his will absolutely, and with- 
out the least qualification, or the least concession of liberty to the conscience 
to compare the commands of the lawful superior with the rule of God's com- 
mandments. But with all due deference to such high authority, what can be 
plainer than that compliance with the will of a lawful Superior is, in itself 
alone, not a Christian virtue, and only becomes such when it flows from the 
love of God and squares with the law of Christ? And yet this sort of 
obedience (if it deserve the name) is a distinctive feature of what is techni- 
cally called, in the Roman Church, the religious life. It is not characteristic 
of the Jesuits alone. Their founder was chiefly remarkable for pushing out 



— 25 — 

what else can be expected than that the policy of the 
Eoman See should "be acted out to the proscrip- 
tion of natural rights and individual liberty and pri- 
vate conscience, so far as they come in collision with 
it ? Promulgated laws and canons, (in those countries 
which are favored with them,)* would indeed be a pro- 

this definition of obedience to its logical consequences, with a profound un- 
consciousness, or at least an utter disregard of their absurdity and impiety. 
Not only must the will be prompt to do as the Superior wills, but the under- 
standing, as Loyola teaches, must be prompt to think as the Superior thinks ; 
the subject must see in the person of the Superior, not a frail man, but Christ 
himself, who is the wisdom of God, and can neither deceive nor be deceived ; 
he must impress it on his mind that whatever his superior enjoins is 
the will and command of God himself; and, he must bring himself, without 
a moment's inquiry, to do whatever his Superior tells him, with a certain 
blind impulse of a will eager to obey. As you instantly apply yourselves, he 
says in his letter to his brethren, to believe what the Catholic faith proposes, 
" Sic ad ea facienda, qusecunque Superior dixerit, cseco quodam impetu volun- 
tatis parendi cupidae, sine ulla prorsus disquisitione feramini." This blind 
and unreserved submission to a lawful superior is required in the Church of 
Rome of those who are called, by way of eminence, the religious, and who 
have taken, or are preparing to take, the vow of obedience. Hence, it not 
only passes for Christian obedience, but is, in the popular belief, the perfec- 
tion of this virtue, and constitutes the most eminent sanctity ; and thus be- 
comes, practically, the doctrine of the Eoman Church. An inevitable con- 
sequence of the doctrine is that obedience to the lawful superior, is paramount 
to (as including) all other virtues, and that not only the lighter deviations 
from moral truth and justice may be connived at, but even vices, or at least 
vicious acts may be leniently dealt with, provided obedience to the lawful su- 
perior be inflexibly maintained. 

* It is well known that the Roman Canon Law, which in many countries 
of Europe is a protection to the rights of the inferior clergy, has never been 
introduced into this country so that the power of the Roman prelates in this 
country is absolute and arbitrary. I use the word arbitrary in no offensive 
sense, for I am willing to believe that they govern their clergy for the most part 
with kindness and courtesy ; but I mean only to say that their authority is not 
restrained and regulated by law, but only by such principles as their own good 
sense and discretion (if they are so happy as to be gifted with these virtues) may 
lead them to adopt. This fact was first brought to my attention by the late 
Father Levins, (a worthy and estimable man in spite of his controversial pro- 
clivities,) and his own history, as he stated it, is an instance in point. 



— 26 — 

tection if men were trained to govern themselves by 
them ; but of what avail are they when the supremacy 
of conscience is denied, and the power of self-govern- 
ment is so far abjured that no man, not even the 
sovereign Pontiff himself is permitted to act in matters 
which concern his own soul, on his direct responsi- 
bility to his Maker ?* We, at least, when we think on 
these things, and consider that the power of govern- 
ment is vested in human functionaries, who, in this 
country, are responsible only to a foreign power which 
is itself responsible to no tribunal on earth, are not 
surprised that a voice from those who are subject to 
the See of Rome should from time to time reach us, 
confessing that it is impossible to sustain the convic- 
tion of the supremacy of that See in face of the fact 
that by it a the natural rights of man, and all indi- 
vidual liberty must be sacrificed; nor only so, but the 
private conscience often violated, and one forced by 
silence at least to acquiesce in what is opposed to moral 
truth and justice."! 

Levins had been suspended by Bishop Dubois, it is said, for an act of diso- 
bedience not involving his moral character ; the suspension was continued 
^or several years, and, in fact, was never removed ; and he himself used to 
refer to it (how justly I know not) as an instance of the oppression to which 
the Roman clergy in this country were subjected for want of the Canon Law. 
Whether any other laws are promulged in this country for the protection 
either of the clergy or people against the" abuses inseparable from arbitrary 
authority, is more than I am able to say. 

* "In the Catholic Church," says Cardinal Wiseman, "no one is ever 
allowed to trust himself in spiritual matters. The Sovereign Pontiff is 
obliged to submit himself to the direction of another in whatever concerns 
his own soul." — Preface to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. 

t As reference is made to the letter of Dr. Forbes, it seems proper to 
annex a copy. As the testimony of an upright and intelligent witness to 
the practical working of the Roman system as it came under his own obser- 
vation, the letter is worth preserving, the more so from its terseness and its 
tone of moderation and firmness : 



— 21 — 

. To the claims of such authority we oppose the de- 
claration of our text — " There is one Lawgiver who is 
able to save and to destroy ; who art thou that judgest 
another V This Lawgiver is the supreme Lord of con- 
science, and conscience is the supreme lord of man. 
As God is the only sovereign of the conscience, so is His 
will the only rule of the conscience. The will of God is 
intimated in nature, revealed in Scripture, and assumed 
as the basis of all legitimate government in the Church, 
the family, and the nation ; and in what way soever 
this Divine will is applied to the conscience, it becomes 
the law of the conscience. God obliges the conscience 
of every man, to whom the rule is manifested, to adopt 
it; and the conscience of every man, so enlightened, 
obliges him to follow it. Your ecclesiastical superior 

New York, October 17, 1859. 
Most Reverend John Hughes, D. D., Archbishop, etc. : — 

Most Reverend Sir — It is now nearly ten years since, under your 
auspices, I laid down my ministry in the Protestant Episcopal Church, to 
submit myself to the Church of Rome. The interval, as you know, has not 
been idly spent ; each day has had its responsibility and duty, and with 
these have come experience, observation and the knowledge of many things 
not so well understood before. The result is that I feel I have committed a 
grave error, which, publicly made, should be publicly repaired. When I 
came to you, it was, as I stated, with a deep and conscientious conviction 
that it was necessary to be in communion with the See of Rome ; but this 
conviction I have not been able to sustain, in face of the fact that by it the 
natural rights of man and all individual liberty must be sacrificed — nor only 
so, but the private conscience often violated, and one forced, by silence at 
least, to acquiesce in what is opposed to moral truth and justice. Under 
these circumstances, when I call to mind how slender is the foundation in 
the earliest ages of the Church upon which has been reared the present 
Papal power, I can no longer regard it as legitimately imposing obligations 
upon me or any one else. I do now, therefore, by this act, disown and 
withdraw myself from its alleged jurisdiction. 

I remain, most reverend sir, your obedient servant, 

John Murray Forbes, D. D., 
Late Pastor of St. Anne's Church, iV. Y. 



28 



informs you of this rule, but he does not create it ; he- 
exhibits it to your conscience, but it is not he who 
gives it its binding force : and if he makes aught else 
besides this divine law to be of the same binding force 
with the divine law ; if he teaches what your con- 
science rejects, and requires compliance with his direc- 
tions in opposition to its dictates ; if he enjoins what 
is extreme or inexpedient, or external to his legitimate 
province, and condemns you for withholding obedience 
to it, then he speaketh evil of the law and judgeth 
the law ; and infringes on the province of that Law- 
giver who alone is able to save and to destroy. 



THE OBLIGATION OF CONSCIENCE. 



1 CORINTHIANS, IY. 4. 

" Foe i know nothing by myself, yet am i not heeeby justified ; but he 
that judgeth me is the lokd." 

Our attention has been lately directed to the Su- 
premacy of Conscience, i. e., to the right of every man 
to govern his moral actions on his direct accountability 
to his Maker. But every right involves a correlative 
duty ; and if a man has a right to govern his moral ac- 
tions, it is his duty to do so in the way which his Maker 
prescribes. To take the right and to shun the duty is 
weak and wicked ; and I will not do you the injustice 
to suppose that you will be pleased with an assertion of 
your right in this respect, and yet be displeased with 
an honest attempt to remind you of the obligations in- 
volved in its exercise. 

The subject is brought to our attention in the Epistle 
for the day,* and particularly in the words which I 
have chosen for my text. From the previous chapter 
it appears that invidious comparisons had been drawn 

* The Discourse was delivered on the Third Sunday in Advent. 



— 30 — 

between the apostle and certain false teachers, and that 
unjust imputations had been cast upon him. In reference 
to which, he says, " Let a man so account of us as of the 
ministers of Christ," that is, as persons commissioned by 
Christ, and acting under Him ; (for the original word 
denotes one who has been set in a subordinate trust or 
office of a public nature) ; " and as stewards of the mys- 
teries of God." In both these relations a man is bound to 
obey the instructions of his superior, and to be always 
ready to render to him a faithful account of his transac- 
tions. Hence having premised that fidelity is required in 
the ministers and stewards of Christ, the apostle adds, 
" But with me it is a very small thing that I be judged 
of you or of man's judgment." For conscious that he 
must render an account of his office and stewardship at 
the tribunal of Christ, he made it his chief concern to 
approve himself to God by following His directions, and 
regarded the judgments of those to whom he ministered, 
and of the generality of men, as matters of compara- 
tively little importance. Nay, he carries the principle 
still further ; for though he knew more of himself than 
others could possibly know of him, and was conscious 
of no fault in the administration of his office, yet he 
dared not absolutely affirm his own rectitude, because 
he knew that he was to be judged at a higher tribunal 
than that of his own conscience. " I know nothing by 
myself," he says, i. <?., I am conscious of no fault in the 
discharge of my office ; " yet am I not hereby justified ; 
for he that judgeth me is the Lord !" 

The expression u To know nothing by one's self" is 
obscure : but there is no obscurity in the original, which 
means to be conscious of nothing, or to know nothing 
in relation to one's self and one's own behavior, as 



— 31 — 

com/pared with a certain ride of action. Now to com- 
pare one's own self and one's own conduct, in matters 
of a moral and religious nature, with a rule, and with a 
view to self-approbation or disapprobation, is the office 
of conscience. So that if we transfer, as we justly may, 
to private Christians, in reference to the conduct of their 
life what St. Paul says of himself in reference to the 
discharge of his office, we shall be led to conclude that 
the conscience of every Christian is furnished by God 
with a rule for the direction of his conduct ; that it is 
fallible in the use of this rule ; that its decisions will 
be reviewed and may be reversed by the Lord, the 
judge of all men ; and that consequently the same rule 
which is given by God for the direction of the con- 
science, is also made by Him a law to oblige the con- 
science. 

If, then, you accept from the Scriptures the doctrine 
of the supremacy of conscience, take with it, from the 
same' Scriptures, the doctrine of the obligation of con- 
science. Remember that conscience, though supreme 
over you in the government of your private thoughts 
and actions, is yet subject to Almighty God, and bound 
by the laws which He has laid on it ; bound to know 
and to understand these laws in order to obey them ; 
liable to err in its deductions from these laws ; liable 
through ignorance and error to transgress these laws, 
and to sanction their transgression ; and certain to be 
judged in the last day for all avoidable ignorance and 
error respecting them. 

Men do but run from the one extreme of error to the 
other, when they affirm the supremacy of conscience 
and then disown the laws of conscience ; when they re- 
sist the attempt to substitute an outward authority in 



— 32 — 

the place of conscience, and then substitute conscience 
in the place of all outward authority ; when they reject 
the figment of an infallible Pope at Rome, and yet set 
up each one a Pope in his own bosom. The one error is 
equally pernicious with the other ; and either, when 
pushed to an extreme, is sure to beget its opposite. 

The latter error, that which asserts the self-sufficiency 
of conscience, and pays no heed to its obligations, is that 
to which we are most exposed. It is an evil incidental 
to the Protestant system ; and if it be not as rampant 
in our own age and country us it was among the Ana- 
baptists of Germany in the sixteenth century, and the 
Puritans of England in the seventeenth, it is, neverthe- 
less, still potent among us for mischief. For is it not a 
common opinion in our country that a man needs no 
higher justification for any act than the dictate of his 
own conscience ? Is it not true, true to an alarming 
extent, that each man claims " the prerogative to set up 
his own conscience above legal enactments and social 
institutions ?"* To give but one instance, I will point 
to the whole subject of marriage and divorce. Is there 
not a growing disposition in our country to make pri- 
vate conscience in those matters the final arbiter of 
right and wrong ? and to pronounce a man right, how- 
ever scandalous the doctrines he promulgates, or how- 
ever repugnant to the Christian standard the relations 
which he forms, provided they are a]3provecl by his own 
conscience ? Is it not the fashion of the day to assume 
and take for granted that a man's own sense of duty is, 
for him at least, the whole rule and measure of duty ; 
and that he may safely repose on the verdict of his own 
conscience for his entire and absolute justification? 

* Message of Governor Wise to the legislature of Virginia. ' 



— 33 — 

This error, as I take it to be, proceeds from a confusion 
in men's minds between conscience itself and the light 
by which the conscience is, or onght to be directed. To 
say that conscience is the light of the soul which every 
man may safely follow, is to use wild words, and to 
open the way for wilder deeds. Light, we know, is a 
metaphorical word to signify knowledge in general ; 
and with reference to our moral conduct it must needs 
mean the knowledge of the Divine Law, either natural 
or revealed. Conscience, on the other hand, is that 
power or faculty by which the mind applies its knowl- 
edge of the Divine Law to its own moral acts, com- 
paring them with the law, and judging them by the 
law. Conscience alone, therefore, is no sufficient guide. 
It needs the light or knowledge of the Divine Law in 
order to direct us aright. If it be destitute of this light 
or fail to apply it, if it be either uninformed or misin- 
formed, it inevitably leads us astray. 

Conscience, therefore, is not a light or law to itself; 
it not only obliges us, but is itself obliged by God, and 
is bound to follow the light which He gives or the rule 
which He prescribes for its direction. So that to 
plead conscience in one's justification, and yet not to be 
able to justify one's acts by the rule which God has 
given us, is both absurd and wicked. 

Nearly allied to this error of the self-sufficiency of 
conscience, is the popular notion which supposes a man 
to be acting conscientiously when he is following what 
he fancies to be the impulses and instincts of a benevo- 
lent nature, For, in the first place, no man can be said 
to act conscientiously, in any intelligible sense of the 
word, unless he has compared his actions with some 
rule or law ; and impulses and instincts are not laws, at 
3 



— 34 — 

least not God's laws for Christians. And in the next 
place, how does he know that the impulses and instincts 
by which he boasts that he is governed are pure in 
their origin and benevolent in their tendency? Cer- 
tainly he cannot know, he can have no good ground to 
believe it, unless he has first brought them to the test 
of some law which God has sanctioned or revealed. 
Love and hatred excited by a sense of religion, and not 
guided by the Divine Law, are always liable to break 
out in the flames of fanaticism and deeds of violence. 
Fear, when an idol is its object, is superstition and 
idolatry. Pity or compassion, when it defeats the ends 
of justice, is worse than weakness and folly. The truth 
is, that the moral quality of human impulses and emo- 
tions depends on our education. If a man has been 
trained to fear God and keep His commandments, he is 
habituated to govern the impulses and feelings of his 
nature by the Christian law ; and the force of Christian 
habit inclines them to move in the right direction. But 
without the discipline of repentance toward God, and 
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, they are not to be 
trusted ; and are likely, when strongly excited, to issue 
in " splendid sins ;" wild and lawless deeds which capti- 
vate a depraved imagination with a certain false glare 
of beauty and grandeur. When, therefore, I hear 
Christian philanthropists recommend their designs, and 
excite men to their achievement, by mere appeals to the 
impulses and instincts of humanity,* I am tempted to 

* The illustrations of this principle are unhappily too common, but it is 
seldom one sees it pushed to so diabolical a length as in the following extract 
of a letter lately published in the daily papers, and credited to the " Rev. 
Theodore Parker." 

" A man held against his will as a slave, has a natural right to kill every 
one who seeks to prevent his enjoyment of liberty. This has long been 



— 35 — 

think either that they have forgotten the prime article 
of the Christian faith — the fall and corruption of man — 
or that they regard Christianity as the product of hu- 
man sentiment, variable, fugitive, flexible; and not as 
the immutable and eternal law to which every human 
thought should be subject. 

But is there not a divine light shining in the mind 
of every man which his conscience is bound to obey ? 
Undoubtedly there is, and God forbid that any Christian 
should disparage it. Hear the description of it by an 
ancient heathen in words as eloquent as ever fell from 
uninspired pen: "This law is right reason, agreeable 
to nature, diffused among all men, constant, eternal; 
which serves to call us to our duty by its commands, 
and to deter us from vice by its prohibitions ; and which, 
although it moves not the wicked either by its com- 
mands or prohibitions, yet fails not of its end when it 
commands or forbids the good. In this law no change 
can be made ; it can be neither partially repealed, nor 
wholly annulled. Neither senate nor people can release 
us from its obligation. It is its own expounder, its 
own interpreter. It will not be one thing at Rome and 
another at Athens, one thing to-day and another to- 
morrow; but eternal, immutable, and, binding all na- 
tions and all ages, it will be one law : and one will be 
its author, arbiter, and giver, God the lord and sove- 
reign of all. Whoever obeys not him, flies from him- 

recognized as a self-evident proposition, coming so directly from the primi- 
tive instincts of human nature, that it neither requires proofs nor admits 
them." 

The negro may not have the logical acumen to see that a " self-evident 
proposition," comes from his " primitive instincts ;" but happily the negro's 
instincts, as a general rule, do more credit to human nature than those of 
Mr. Parker. 



— 36 — 

self; and having scornfully rejected his own humanity, 
suffers, from this very fact, the greatest punishment, 
even though he escape those other sufferings which are 
believed to exist [in a future state.]"* 

This law, (which is said, by a figure borrowed from 
the ancient method of promulgating laws by letters 
carved on pillars of brass or tables of stone, to be en- 
graven on the hearts of men,) comprises all the prin- 
ciples of truth, justice, and rectitude ; and by these 
principles the conscience of every man is undoubtedly 
bound so far as they can be clearly unfolded and ap- 
plied to the direction of his conduct. But it is the 
unhappiness of our condition in this world that the 
principles of action which we can with certainty de- 
rive from this law, are of an abstract and general 
nature. Good is to be done ; evil is to be avoided ; 
render to every man his due ; be faithful in your en- 
gagements ; these and such like are principles of the 
law of nature, which, like the law itself, need no in- 
terpreter, and are of universal and perpetual force ; 

* I subjoin this splendid passage of Cicero, for the preservation of which 
we are still exclusively indebted to Lactantius, as it was not found on the pa- 
limpsest of St. Augustine's Commentary, from which a large portion oftheDe 
Republica has been recovered. " Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturae con- 
gruens, diffusa in omnes, constans, sempiterna ; quae vocet ad officium jubendo, 
vetando a fraude deterreat ; quae tamen neque probos frustra jubet, aut vetat ; 
nee improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nee obrogari fas est, ne- 
que derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tota abrogari potest. Nee vero aut per 
senatum, aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus. Neque jest quaerendus 
explanator, aut interpres ejus alius. Nee erit alia lex Romae, alia Athenis, 
alia nunc, alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore una lex, et 
sempiterna et immutabilis continebit ; unusque erit communis quasi magister 
et imperator omnium Deus ; ille legis hujus inventor, disceptator, lator ; cui 
qui non parebit ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernatus hoc ipso luet 
maximas pcenas, etiamsi ccetera supplicia, quae putantur, effugerit." — 
Lactantius De Vero Cultu, lib. vi. sect. 8. 



— 37 — 

not one thing at Washington and another at West- 
minster, but acknowledged to be binding by every 
man who understands the meaning of the words 
in which they are expressed. But come one step 
nearer to practice, and you find it impossible to deduce 
from these first principles, any other principles of 
action which are not embarrassed with doubts and ex- 
ceptions. Parents are to be honored, and yet their 
commands are to be despised when they interfere with 
the love of God. The life of our neighbor is to be 
preserved; and yet there are circumstances which 
justify us in depriving him of it. We are bound to 
keep our promise ; but not if the fulfilment of it should 
require us to put a sword in the hands of a maniac. 
So impossible is it to deduce from these first principles 
any secondary ones, not to speak of those more re- 
mote, which are absolutely and universally obligatory. 
Like the axioms of geometry, the first and self-evident 
principles of the law of nature, prove nothing which 
a sane man disputes.* They are indeed the foundation 
of the order of human society ; but to deduce from 
them the laws which define the rights and prescribe 
the duties of those who are subject to that order and 
enjoy its protection, is the most exalted and arduous 
of all human labors. While, then, we revere this di- 
vine law, and confess it to be of higher obligation 
than any human statutes and enactments that contra- 
dict it, we may see at the same time how easy a thing 

* See Domat's Preface to his work on the Civil Law. The treatise which 
Domat has prefixed to his elaborate work is one of the soundest and most 
luminous expositions of the first principles of Law any where to be found, 
and deserves to be as well known to the clergy as we must suppose it to be 
to Members of Congress. 



— 38 — 

it is for rashness and ignorance to pervert its self-evi- 
dent principles and apply them to the subversion of 
human constitutions and governments that acknowledge 
it and are founded upon it. 

The more numerous and complicated the relations 
and circumstances of life, the greater the difficulty of 
applying the light of nature to the direction of the 
conscience : every step of our progress is attended 
with doubt and uncertainty, and the farther we pro- 
ceed the more need have we of care and caution to 
preserve us from bewilderment and error. And it is 
doubtless to the inability of human reason, in our 
fallen state, to unfold the principles of this divine law, 
and still more to the want of authority to bind it on 
the conscience by such sanctions as will render it oper- 
ative, that we must ascribe the approval which has 
been extended in heathen nations, both ancient and 
modern, to the most loathsome and stupendous vices. 
Never enough then can we adore the goodness of our 
Maker for that bright transcript of the law of nature 
which shines forth in the pages of Divine Revelation. 
There we behold this divine law in its glory, diffusing 
its radiance over all the relations* and circumstances of 

* The relations, namely, of husband and wife, parents and children, magis- 
trate and subject, master and servant, etc, which comprise (if religion were a 
thing to be divided into parts,) about five-sixths of religion. Christianity re- 
gards all these relations as existing either by God's direct appointment, or with 
His sanction and approval ; and it takes men in all these relations, and 
seeks to make them good and virtuous in order to make them happy : and 
it teaches them that they are then good and virtuous when they fulfil the 
duties proper to the relations in which God's providence has placed them. 
The anarchical spirit of the age, following its own exposition of the law of 
nature instead of that given us by Divine Revelation, assails and confounds 
all these relations. By seeking to abrogate the divine institution of mar- 
riage, it aims to bring men into a state of herding, (society it can hardly 



— 39 — 

life, and bound on the consciences of men as the com- 
mand of their Sovereign, and under the most awful 
sanctions. Guided and governed by this heavenly 

be called,) in which only one natural relation could with certainty be be- 
lieved to exist, viz., that of mother and child. By denying the divine insti- 
tution of government, (forgetting that God may confer His authority on the 
magistrate, by means of popular election, as well as by any other means,) 
and making the people instead of their Creator the real source of power and 
authority it confounds, or rather inverts the relation of magistrate and sub- 
ject, strips government of all pretence to reverence, and deprives it of one 
of its strongest claims to respect and affection. No wonder then, that 
following its ignis fatuus, (the shining bubble of putrid vapor which it mis- 
takes for the light of nature,) into the dreary wilds of anarchy, it affects to 
read us some lessons on the relation of master and servant, out of its gospel 
of liberty, which are not to be found in any other gospel. The baneful ef- 
fects of its teachings at the present time, in regard to this last relation, do 
not leave me at liberty to advert to the subject at all, without asking the 
reader to join me for a moment in looking at it from the Christian stand- 
point. 

I remark, then, that the relation of master and servant, (using the word 
servant in its broadest or generic sense,) exists now in our country, as it has 
existed in other times and countries. Whether the relation be by God's ap- 
proval and appointment, or whether he only tolerates it in order to further 
the wise ends of His good Providence, is a speculative question, which we 
may safely leave to be discussed by those who have no better employment 
for their time and talents. Our business is to take the relation as an existing 
fact, and inquire what is our duty respecting it. 

St. Paul, I suppose, spoke the sense of his Master and of his fellow apos- 
tles, when he said : " Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters 
according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, 
as unto Christ : not with eye service, as men.pleasers ; but as the servants 
of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart : with good-will doing serv- 
ice, as to the Lord, and not to men : knowing that whatsoever good thing 
any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond 
or free ;" and also in what he adds respecting the duty of masters. Beyond 
a doubt, then, Christianity recognizes the relation of master and servant, and 
points out the reciprocal duties involved in it. 

Of the "servants," in St. Paul's time, there were several sorts, the chief 
of which were, 1st., those who were hired for a term of time ; 2d., those 
who were servants for life, or slaves in the proper sense of the word. These 
last were the property of their masters ; not in the limited sense in which 
slaves are acknowledged as property in some of the United States, but in 



— 40 — 

light, we walk with firm and certain step : only 
through our own fault can we stumble or lose our way. 
The great principles of the love of God and the love 

the absolute sense, which gives the master the power of life and death over 
his slaves. The apostle, however, does not limit his precept to either 
class, bnt exhorts servants of both classes to obey their masters ; not both 
in the same sense, but each according to the condition of his servitude ; the 
hired servant according to the terms of his engagement, the servant for life 
according to his more dependent condition. And if the precept applied to 
both classes then, it applies to both now ; for there has been no new servi- 
tude introduced, nor old abrogated ; but servants are left by Christianity, 
just in the state it found them, only rendered better and happier in that state. 
[See Bishop Fleetwood on Relative Duties.] 

It would seem, then, that God cares for the happiness of servants, both 
hired and for life, as well as for the happiness of the rest of mankind ; and 
that He aims to make them happy in the same way that He aims to make all 
men happy, viz. by making them first good and virtuous, or by disposing 
them to fulfil the duties proper to their station in life. Nor do I see that 
they who are charged with the propagation of His gospel can do better than 
follow the course which he has pointed out for them to pursue. 

If the question be raised whether slaves, as well as others, may not change 
their condition in life for a better, and whether we may not help them to do 
so, I answer yes, so it be done in a lawful way. St. Paul settles this point, 
for he permits the slave who has a lawful opportunity of obtaining his free- 
dom to "use it rather ;" i. e., to accept freedom as a preferable state to servi- 
tude. But the gospel no where permits slaves, more than other men, to at- 
tempt to better their condition by violence or by any unlawful means ; nor 
does it permit us to tempt them to, or to aid and abet them in such unlawful 
attempts ; but just the contrary. 

" The common lot of slaves in general" says Dr. John Taylor, an eminent 
writer of the last century on the Civil Law, "was, with the ancients, in many 
circumstances very deplorable. * * * * Of their situation take the following 
instances : they were held pro mdlis, pro mortuis, pro quadrupedibus, for 
no men, for dead men, for beasts ; nay, were in a much worse state than any 
cattle whatsoever. * * * * They had no head in the state, no name, no tribe or 
register. They were not capable of being injured, nor could they take by 
purchase or descent : had no heirs, and therefore could make no will of course. 
Exclusive of what was called their pecuUum., whatever they acquired was 
their master's ; they could not pleid nor be pleaded, but were excluded from 
all civil concerns whatsoever : * * * * were not entitled to the rights and con- 
siderations of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in the case of adultery. 
Nor were they proper objects of cognation or affinity, but of quasi-coy natio- 



— 41 — 

of man, the sum and substance of the law of nature, 
are so luminously unfolded and so directly applied to 
our several stations of life, that we easily apprehend 
all our personal and relative duties, if not in every 
minute particular that may arise, at least in all matters 
that vitally concern either our own salvation, or the 
peace and welfare of human society. This, then, is the 
supreme rule of conscience, the will of God as revealed 
in Holy Scripture. By this rule not only the impulses 
and feelings of human nature, but all the inferences 
and deductions which private reason draws, or fancies 
that it draws, from the light of nature, must be fairly 
and honestly tested. " To the law and to the testimony ; 
if they speak not according to this word, it is because 
there is no light in them." 

And yet what do we see ? Why, in this professedly 
Christian country we see men affecting to take their 
stand on the law of nature ; assuming under its vener- 
able name what they fancy to be its self-evident prin- 
ciples, but which are probably no more than wild and 
visionary conceits; drawing from their assumed prin- 

They could be sold, transferred, or pawned as goods or personal estate ; for 
goods they were and such were they esteemed ; might be tortured for evi- 
dence, punished at the discretion of their lord, and even put to death by his 
authority ; together with many other civil incapacities which I have not 
room to enumerate.'" — Elements of Civil Law, p. 429, London, 1775. Cer- 
tainly, the condition of slaves in general, in our own country is no worse (I 
have the charity to believe, that it is, in many respects, better,) than it was 
in the time of our Lord and his apostles ; and if they had patience with the 
state of things then existing ; if they sought to ameliorate servitude by 
inculcating on servants the virtues of contentment and obedience, I beg to 
ask whether it be not sufficient honor for us, the ministers of the Gospel 
which they delivered, to co-operate with God in accomplishing His own 
ends in His own way ; and whether it be not better for us to do good to 
men in the way which He has marked out for us, than to attempt to mend 
their condition by taking counsel of our own impatience and precipitancy ? 



— 42 — 

ciples conclusions which are subversive of the govern- 
ment under which they live, and, indeed, of all social 
order that is not after their own pattern ; propagating 
their tenets with the more confidence, because the wise 
are silent and fools applaud ; and when they find that 
the counsels which they give, or the measures which 
they recommend, are directly repugnant to the plain 
doctrines and precepts of Holy Writ, and are for this 
reason discountenanced and reprobated by the great 
majority of Christian men and Christian ministers, 
daring to proclaim to the world, that rather than re- 
nounce their darling fancies, they will reject, nay, fling 
from them with scorn and hatred the Christian religion. 
But these misguided men should know that it is easier 
for them to renounce the Christian religion than to 
escape from it. For that religion, whether they own 
it or not, is the law of their conscience ; the law by 
which God has declared that their consciences are 
obliged in this world, and shall be judged in the world 
to come ; and for every deviation from which, there- 
fore, in thought, word, and deed, they must render 
their account before the judgment seat of Christ. 

From all such extravagances as these the Holt 
Scriptures will preserve us while we receive and use 
them' as the supreme rule of conscience. The Ten Com- 
mandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the numer- 
ous moral precepts which are scattered through the 
Scriptures, especially the Scriptures of the New Testa- 
ment, are a rule abundantly sufficient for the direction 
of the conscience in all essential matters, and such as 
most nearly and deeply affect the order and welfare of 
human society. And as we confess them to be a rule 
revealed by our Maker for the guidance of the consci- 



— 43 — 

ence, so ought we to use them as a rule, and pronounce 
all opinions and actions that run parallel with them to 
be right, and all that diverge from them to be wrong. 
Reasonings from abstract principles and calculations of 
expediency are good in their place ; but they are not in 
place, they are not needed, but are an obtrusion and an 
impertinence in all cases in which the directions of Holy 
Scripture are plain and unequivocal. As well say that 
a man with a literal rule in his hand cannot distinguish 
straight lines from crooked without the power of mathe- 
matical analysis, as that the Christian, with God's own 
rule in his hand, cannot distinguish right from wrong, 
virtue from vice, in matters of fundamental importance, 
and on which His word has plainly spoken, without 
investigating the origin and foundation of society, the 
nature of property and liberty, and all the clashing 
theories of human rights* We degrade ourselves and 
insult our Maker when we set aside His rule, in cases 

* In reference to the origin of civil government, Scripture deals in facts and 
not in theories. It tells us that God created the first human pair, gave the 
man dominion over the creatures of the earth, and taught him the use of lan- 
guage ; so that the foundation of order and government was laid before men 
were born or property existed. " Of Noah and his family was the whole earth 
overspread." That Noah should be the governor of his family was the dic- 
tate of nature as well as the appointment of God ■ and hence the first govern- 
ment was patriarchal. As families and tribes multiplied, jealousies and dis- 
putes were excited, which led to conflicts and wars ; the vanquished were sub- 
ject to the conqueror, and some one government, at first small, became large 
by the absorption of others. The first of these victorious chiefs who founded 
a large empire was Nimrod, and " the beginning of his kingdom was Babel," 
that is, Babylon, as the margin of the Bible reads. " Out of that land went 
forth Ashur, and builded Nineveh" [Gen. x.] ; and this was the beginning of 
the (great Assyrian empire, which was, in process of time, subverted by the 
Persian, as was the Persian by the Grecian, and the Grecian by the Roman, 
out of which last have been formed, as we know, the states and governments 
of modern Europe. [See Bishop Home's sensible discourse on the subject.] 
This is the historical account of the origin of government, and it proves clearly 



— 44 — 

to which it is plainly adequate, and substitute in its 
place our paltry theories and presumptuous specula- 
tions. In regard, then, to those theorists who seek to 
subvert the settled order and institutions of Christian 
society ; who allege, for instance, manifold causes of 
divorce where God allows but one ; who teach and 
promote sedition and insurrection where He inculcates 
submission and obedience ; or who talk of nothing but 
rights, in cases in which His word enjoins nothing but 
duties, our course should be prompt and decisive. As 
the ancient fathers deemed the creed a sufficient foil for 
heresies, so now to the vagaries of these wild dreamers 
it is enough to answer, "Thou shalt do no murder; 
thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou shalt not steal ; 

that the natural state of man is a state of social order and subordination. 
The preposterous notion of Epicurus, 

Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris, 
Mutum et turpe pecus, glandem atque cubilia propter 
Unguibus et pugnis, dein fustibus, atque ita porro 
Pugnabant arrnis, quae post fabricaverat usus, 
Donee verba, quibus voces sensusque notarent, 
Nominaque invenere ; debinc absistere bello, 
Oppida coeperunt munire, et ponere leges, 
Ne quis fur esset, neu latro, neu quis adulter : 

that men, when first produced, crawled forth a mute and filthy herd, and be- 
gan to fight for caves and acorns, (or pears and whortle-berries, as Lucre- 
tius has it,) at first with fist and nails, then with clubs, and next with sword 
and pike, until they invented language, and then, having fairly started in " the 
march of intellect," began to abstain from war and to enact laws, etc., for 
their mutual protection ; a notion which, but for the genius of Lucretius and 
Horace, might have been consigned to contempt and oblivion, has been dress- 
ed up in modern times, and dignified as the theory of the " social compact ;" 
which supposes men to have existed originally in a (fancied) state of nature, 
and then, upon experience of its evils, to have formed themselves into society, 
each one surrendering a portion of his individual liberty for the general good : 
a theory which, in the hands of Sir William Blackstone, may furnish con- 
venient formulas of expression in the investigation of human rights, but 
which, when incautiously adopted and made the basis of political manifestoes, 
can be productive only of pompous verbal inanities and practical mischief. 



— 45 — 

tliou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house ; thou shalt 
not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his servant," etc., and 
" Honor and respect those who, by God's ordinance, are 
set in authority over you." These commands are the 
foundation of Christian and civilized society ; and when 
public opinion ceases to be controlled by them, or the 
magistrate fails to sustain and enforce them, we must 
sink into a state of barbarism and anarchy. 

What crime so atrocious, what impiety so base, what 
sacrilege so abominable, that is not invested with the 
appearance of truth and justice, when once we begin to 
ask in reference to the sins of men, not "What deed 
have they done ? but why have they done it ?"* In other 
words, there is no iniquity which may not be justified, 
when once we begin to estimate men's sins by the 
motives and intentions that prompted them. It is not 
I who say this in reference to the transactions of the 
day,f but it is an ancient father of the Church, who 
shows, moreover, that by such a rule of judgment the 
greatest crimes, under pretence of being done for a good 
cause, would cease to be sinful, and become virtuous ; 
and that their perpetrators, instead of fearing punish- 
ment, would even hope for honor and reward. It 

* Quod enim sceleratissimum facinus, quod turpissimum flagitiium, quod 
impiissimum sacrilegium non dicatur posse fieri recte atque juste ; nee im- 
pune tantum, verum etiam gloriose, ut in eo perpetrando, non solum supplicia 
nulla timeantur, sed sperentur et prsemia : si semel concesserimus in omnibus 
malis operibus hominum ideo non quod fiat, sed quare fiat quaerendum ; u t 
quaecumque propter bonas causas facta inveniuntur, nee ipsa mala esse judi- 
centur. — S. August. Contra Mendacium, cap. 7. 

t The allusion is to the late nefarious but futile attempt to excite a servile 
insurrection in Virginia, which was represented by certain public function- 
aries as condemned by " human laws," (as if God's laws made no account 
of treason and murder,) and extolled by press and pulpit, to the scan- 
dal of all sober Christians, as a deed of Christian heroism. 



— 46 — 

would seem that mankind in the days of Augustine, 
were much the same as at present. In every age, indeed, 
a good cause has been the cover of crime ; sometimes on 
principle, and by the crafty few who adopt the maxima 
that " the end will justify the means ;" and at other 
times from passion, and by the many who have some 
cant phrase to hide from their own eyes the enormity 
of their wickedness. " The glory of God I" was the 
watchword that in an age now past excited a frenzied 
multitude to deeds of rapine and blood. In this age 
the cry of the religious world is " The good of men !" 
The duplicity and hypocrisy, the craft and violence 
which this specious pretence daubs over with the colors 
of philanthropy and justice, it must be left for history 
to record. It is an odious and fruitless office to declaim 
against the times ; and I am, therefore, content to 
remark, that while I yield to none in an ardent desire 
for the welfare of mankind of every class and race, I 
have no sympathy with those who seek to do them 
good in any other way than by obedience to the com- 
mandments of God. For sure I am that no man can 
promote the welfare and happiness of mankind without 
taking the law of God for the rule of his actions ; and 
that no one action, whatever be pretended to the con- 
trary, can be referred to the good of men as an end, 
which may not be resolved into a duty of charity, and 
be justified by some one of the Ten Commandments.* 

Not only are the Scriptures a divine rule for the di- 
rection of the conscience, but they are a divine law also 
to oblige it. So far as we know this law, and in such 
sense as we understand it, we confess, of course, our obli- 
gation to obey it. But is this all ? If the law is duly 

* See the second of Bishop Sanderson's Prelections, De Bona Intentione. 



_ 47 — 

promulgated, what right have we to be ignorant of any 
of its requirements ? If the law is plain and express, 
what right have we to put on it a construction which 
perverts its meaning, or a gloss which defeats its end ? 
Ignorance of human laws, we know, is never accepted 
as a valid excuse for breaking them ; and the evasion or 
perversion of them, if it be not a crime that will subject 
us to penalties, is, at least, an offence that should involve 
us in disgrace. But then we have so quick a sense of 
bodily pain, of worldly reputation, and of the value of 
property, that we take care to be duly informed of the 
laws of our country, and for the most part take an 
honest pride in obeying them. And if we had a due 
sense of the worth of our souls, and a due concern for 
the glory of God's heavenly and eternal kingdom ; if 
we had got beyond the perils of probation, and were 
living in the distinct and full consciousness of the judg- 
ments which the spirits of the departed faithful and the 
holy angels pass on our thoughts and actions, we should 
doubtless be prompt to learn and to do the will of God 
in its just meaning, and to its full extent. In our pres- 
ent state, however, present and sensible things impress 
our minds far more vividly than things future and heav- 
enly ; and hence, it is one of the greatest perils of our 
probation, that, while the will of God is plainly revealed 
and sufficiently published, we may yet be living in 
ignorance of its requirements, and rashly or perversely 
put on the Word of God a sense and meaning which it 
was never intended to bear. As an incentive, then, to 
humility and caution, to sobriety and reverence, to care 
and diligence, in the study of God's holy Word let us 
realize the fact, and impress it on our minds as a most 
certain truth, that the law by which the conscience is 



— 48 — 

obliged in this world, and by which it will be judged 
in the world to come, is the will of God, as He has re- 
vealed and promulgated it ; and not the will of God, so 
far only as it suits our indolence or convenience to learn 
it, nor in such sense as it may please a lawless fancy to 
understand it, or a fro ward humor to receive it. 

For although it has pleased God to give us in the 
Holy Scriptures the supreme rule of conscience, yet it 
has not pleased Him either by Scripture, or by any 
other means, to save men from their own treachery and 
against their own will: this they must see to them- 
selves. If they receive the Holy Scriptures at the 
hands of those whom God has appointed to dispense 
them, and read or hear them with an humble and re- 
verential temper, and with the honest purpose to com- 
pare the teaching of their lawful pastors with God's 
own Word ; if they faithfully and resolutely make 
them the rule by which to judge of their tempers and 
opinions, as well as of their words and actions, there 
can be no doubt of the sufficiency of the Scriptures to 
keep them in all necessary truth. But if they take up 
the Scriptures while yet they are in a state of aliena- 
tion from the Church of God, and expect to be led by 
them into all truth, with no man to guide them ; and if, 
moreover, they bring to the Scriptures a mind luxuri- 
ating in its own conceits and fancies, and consult them 
for the purpose of gaming support for some precon- 
ceived opinion or theory, begotten of their own pride, 
or passion, or love of paradox, they do not deal hon- 
estly with their Maker ; they abuse and pervert His 
noblest gifts, and they have no just reason to complain 
if He "send them strong delusion, that they should 



— 49 — 

believe a lie."* The Scriptures were not intended to 
disabuse men of errors which they are unwilling to re- 
nounce, or to possess their minds with truth which 
they do not love ; and it ought not, therefore, to sur- 
prise us, except so far as all sin is matter of wonder 
and astonishment, that men are found to oppress the 
fatherless and widow, and to stain their hands with in- 
nocent blood ; to abet and promote faction and schism 
in the Church, insurrection and sedition in the state ; 
and to violate the very plainest laws of God, and yet 
plead Scripture and conscience in their justification. 
The Church has its discipline for such men, the state 
its punishment ; but what have we, the ministers of the 
Gospel, to say to their plea of Scripture and conscience 
in their own behalf? What we say is, that men may 
wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction ; that 
conscience alone is no sufficient guide, but that, unless 
honest and duly informed, it may lead men to perdi- 
tion ; that their plea of sincerity or honesty is, to the 
eye of human judgment, refuted by their sins ; and, in 
fine, that their conscience is obliged not by their opin- 
ions of the revealed law, but by the law itself; and 
that by this law they will be tried in the Day of Judg- 
ment. Beyond this we can say nothing, but must 
leave them to the just judgment of God. 

Of men like these, it is no breach of charity to say 
that their deeds speak louder than their words ; and 
that while their words proclaim them sincere and just, 
their deeds give us too much reason to believe that 

* And for this cause, viz., " because they received not the love of the 
truth," God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a 
lie ; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had 
pleasure in unrighteousness :" 2 Thess. ii. 11, 12. 
4 



— 50 — 

their conscience is not only erroneous, but depraved. 
But, undoubtedly, the conscience may be misguided 
and yet sincere and honest. For there are many of 
whom it is safe to say that they have a very imperfect 
knowledge of revealed religion, but whose sincerity 
cannot be questioned; men who from their position 
and education have grown up, through no fault of their 
own, in ignorance of some of the requirements of the 
divine law, and with misapprehension respecting other 
requirements ; and whose search after the truth is ren- 
dered to some extent fruitless by circumstances for 
which they are not responsible. The conscience of 
these persons is, by supposition, good and honest; 
only the rule which exists in their own minds for the 
guidance and direction of their conscience, differs more 
or less from the supreme rule, and is in so far defective 
and erroneous. Now it is the unhappiness of these 
persons, and we have no right to disguise the fact, 
that they cannot, in their present state, follow the 
light of their own conscience without coming very far 
short of the supreme rule, and perhaps crossing it in 
some particulars. But still their course is plain. Let 
them strive to keep a good conscience ; that is, a con- 
science void of known and wilful sin, acting up faith- 
fully to the light it has, and willing to learn and 
prompt to renounce, when learned, its defects and er- 
rors. Our Lord has told us that " To him that hath 
shall be given ;" and that he who is faithful in little 
shall be entrusted with much. Saul, the persecutor, 
had lived in " all good conscience" toward God, or he 
had never, I believe, become Paul the apostle : it 
was his honest and good heart, in connexion with his 
boldness and energy, that recommended him to God ; 



— 51 — 

he had " sinned," but it was " ignorantly and in unbe- 
lief," and therefore he obtained mercy. But let them 
remember that there are degrees of goodness : let them 
not think that their conscience, because good in a de- 
gree, is therefore right and perfect ; that it needs not 
to be quickened and informed ; that because they are 
" conscientious," they are therefore living up to the 
full Christian standard ; that there are no windows of 
the soul yet to be opened, no prejudices and passions 
to be dispelled, in order that the divine light, which 
is ever seeking admission, may enter. Let them con- 
fess, and pray God to remove and forgive their ignor- 
ances as well as their sins. I know, in truth, that we 
all need to make this confession ; but I fear that while 
we neglect to make it ; while we forget our ignorances,* 
and fail to regard them as in such sense sins, that they 
need to be confessed and forgiven, in order that they 
may be discovered and removed ; while we rejoice 
each one in the light of his own mind, as if it were all 
the light which Scripture contained, we encourage our- 
selves and one another in such wide departures from 
the supreme rule of conscience, as to bring the very 
word conscientiousness into contempt and ridicule. 

In a community like ours, in which the liberty of 
conscience is professedly regulated by the Holy Scrip- 
tures, and in which every other restraint is regarded 
with suspicion or rejected with scorn, too much impor- 
tance can hardly be attached to this distinction ; the 
distinction, I mean, between the supreme rule which 

* The litany of the Book of Common Prayer teaches us to pray ; " that 
it may please " our good Lord" to give us true repentance : to forgive us all 
our sins, negligences and ignorances ; and to endue us with the grace of His 
Holy Spirit, to amend our lives according to His Holy Word." 



— 52 — 

God has given to direct and oblige the consciences of 
all Christians, and that judgment which one forms of 
the teaching of Scripture for one's self, and by which 
one's own conscience is immediately directed. For the 
two do not necessarily coincide ; and the supreme rule 
is defeated when, and in so far as, a false judgment of 
its meaning is substituted in its place and becomes, as 
in this case it must, the immediate rule of conscience. 
It is true indeed that in matters fundamental and essen- 
tial to salvation, the "Word of God is plain and express ; 
the pious care of the Church also comes to our aid, not 
only giving us the Holy Scriptures in our own language, 
but digesting those precepts and counsels, which are dif- 
fused through them, into brief summaries and exposi- 
tions of duty, and following us, as it were, both in pub- 
lic and private, with the oral instructions of her minis- 
try ; so that if, with honest purpose, we take reasonable 
pains to inform our consciences, we are in no danger of 
perilous error. Still the danger exists, and it is only 
when we are sensible of it, that we set a just value on 
the helps by which we are enabled to avoid it. Like 
most other dangers which attend our probation, it is 
great enough to make us circumspect and diligent, but 
not so great as to discourage us. We should be less 
solicitous than we are, to come to the knowledge of the 
truth, if we were not held responsible for our errors. 
Seeing, then, that conscience can never direct us aright 
unless it be duly informed, let us candidly compare the 
judgments of our own mind with the supreme rule of 
truth and duty. Let us guard against pride and vanity, 
prejudice and passion, and all the insinuations of self- 
love ; remembering that it is only in an honest and good 
heart that the Word of God can take root, and spring 



— 53 — 

up and bear fruit to eternal life. So doing, and look- 
ing constantly to the illumination of God's Holy Spieit 
to give us a right judgment in all things, we may in- 
dulge a sober, humble, and reasonable confidence that 
we shall be guarded, if not from all error, at least from 
all that will imperil our salvation. 

To the divine light or knowledge which has been 
shed on the conscience, there has been no accession since 
the time of our Blessed Savior. Nor can there be : for 
He is that very Word or Wisdom of the Fathee which 
shines forth in the dictates of the universal reason, and 
which revealed itself of old to patriarchs and prophets ; 
and therefore since He has been " made flesh and dwelt 
among us," it is impossible for mankind to rise above 
His teaching. By coming to us in person He has shed 
upon the conscience more light than any man, be he 
who he may, is capable of receiving ; and the most that 
we can do is to preserve His doctrine, to unfold and apply 
it, and so, the longer we live, come the nearer to His 
standard of perfection. 

For a knowledge of the revelations of this Divine 
Wisdom, both before and since Its manifestation in the 
flesh, we can rely with perfect safety only on the canon- 
ical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament ; for 
there is no other written document which any man of 
the present day pretends to be an inspired and authen- 
tic record of them ; and as to oral tradition, it is 
a mode of conveyance so uncertain and so liable to 
abuse as not to be trustworthy in a matter of this im- 
portance. It is this fact which invests the Holy Scrip- 
tures with unspeakable importance and makes them, by 
the confession of all Christians, the supeeme rule of 
conscience ; that is, a rule from which there is no ap- 



— 54 — 

peal, and such that whatever they expressly command 
us to do, is to be done ; and that whatever they expressly 
forbid, is to be avoided. 

But while the Scriptures shed on us a brighter light 
than we have by nature, making many things plain 
which were before obscure, they do not remove all ob- 
scurity. Possibly if they did, some of the ends of 
human probation would be defeated, and there would 
be less scope for the exercise of humility, mutual for- 
bearance and patient inquiry. However this be, it is 
certain that it has not pleased God to spread out all the 
treasures of His Wisdom on the surface of Scripture. 
Some of it is to be sought and acquired by the applica- 
tion of reason. And this acquired knowledge, which 
opens on the mind gradually, and discovers itself to 
some minds more than to others, is obviously of use to 
direct the conscience, if not in things essential to 
salvation, yet in many other things which involve the 
comfort of the individual, and affect, in various degrees? 
the welfare of society and the peace and prosperity of 
the Church. 

Hence it is, that while the Holy Scriptures are the 
supreme rule of conscience, they are not the adequate 
rule. The adequate rule of conscience should prescribe 
to us every thing that we ought to do in morals and 
religion, and forbid every thing that we ought to avoid ; 
it should remove all difficulties, at least all which per-, 
plex a pious and prudent mind. But the Scriptures, 
we know, are not such a rule. Many a pious and sensi- 
ble man with the Scriptures in his hands feels the need 
of directions which he cannot find in the Scriptures. 
The knowledge of the Divine Will which he seeks is in 
those sacred fountains, but he cannot draw it out. Some 



55 



denominations of Christians also believing the Scriptures 
to be (as they truly are) the adequate rule of faith, are 
divided and kept asunder, to the hazard even of the 
essential faith, because they practically believe the 
Scriptures to be (what in truth they are not) the ade- 
quate rule of conscience ; and seek to guide their wor- 
ship and practice by- such regulations only as the Scrip- 
tures expressly sanction. In no other way can we hope 
to meet these wants, or harmonize these diversities, than 
by that light which is acquired by the profound and 
diligent study of the Scriptures under the guidance of 
God's good spirit, and with the aids and advantages of 
human lore. So that while the Divine light for the 
government of the conscience is always one and the 
same, being always the beams or emanations of the 
eternal Word or Wisdom ; we are yet obliged, when we 
consider it under the notion of a rule, to exhibit it as 
threefold : 1. As an imperfect rule, which is the will of 
God, as apprehended by unassisted reason ; 2. The su- 
preme rule, which is the will of God expressly and 
authoritatively declared in Holy Scripture ; and, 3. The 
adequate rule, which is the will of God in what way 
soever it be ascertained ; the imperfect rule correspond- 
ing to the light innate, the supreme rule to the light in- 
fused, and the adequate rule to the light acquired. 

The light necessary to the adequate rule of conscience, 
is acquired, as we have said, by the application of rea- 
son, in a suitable way, and with the best helps it can 
command, to the investigation of Scripture ; and hence 
we naturally look for it in the judgments of men most 
eminent for piety and learning ; and because the whole 
Church may be supposed to possess more wisdom and 
piety than any one of her members, we look for it with 



— 56 — 

still more confidence to the authority, that is, the judg- 
ment and practice of the Universal Church. It is, in- 
deed, possible to exalt authority to the contempt of 
reason, and to exalt reason to the rejection of authority. 
But it is the part of wisdom to unite the two ; to har- 
monize authority with reason, and reason with author- 
ity* Both are reconciled, to the great benefit of man- 
kind, in the appeal to the Law of Nations, which is 
nothing more than that which natural reason has every- 
where decreed ;f and both are reconciled in the appeal 
to the authority of the Church, which is simply the 
collective judgment of reason, since her lamp has been' 
kindled by the light of Divine Kevelation. 

Our Church teaches that " Holy Scripture containeth 
all things necessary to salvation : so that whatsoever is 
not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to 
be required of any man, that it should be believed 
as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or 
necessary to salvation :" (Art. vi.) in other words, she 

* "Pontificii, dum in illam partem omnia studia sua conferunt, ut nequid 
ecclesise suae authoritati decedat, parum deferunt rationi; Sociniani ex ad- 
verso, dum rejecta omni authoritate fidem sola ratione metiuntur, id tandem 
agunt ut cum ratione insaniant. Unus utrisque error; sed variis illudit par. 
tibus. Vitabitur uterque scopulus non aliter commodius quam si cum ratione 
authoritas, cum authoritate ratio scite et prudenter conjungantur." — {Bishop 
Sanderson Be Adequatd Conscientice Eeguld.) That is, the Papists, while 
they bend all their efforts to uphold the authority of their church, pay little 
regard to reason ; the Socinians (extreme Protestants), on the other hand 
while they reject all authority, and make reason alone the standard of their 
faith, drive matters to such a pitch as to run mad with reason. The error 
of both is the same, but shows itself in different ways, and there is no bet- 
ter method to avoid both rocks than by the skilful and prudent conjunction 
of authority with reason, and reason with authority. 

t Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constitutit, id apud omnes 
populos perseque custoditur, vocaturque jus gentium, quasi quo jure omnes 
gentes utantur. — Instit. Justin., Lib. i. Tit. 2. 



— 57 — 

acknowledges Holy Scripture to be the adequate rule 
of Faith. She teaches also that "the Church hath 
power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in 
controversies of Faith ; and yet it is not lawful for the 
Church to ordain any thing contrary to God's word 
written, neither may it so expound one place of Scrip- 
ture that it be repugnant to another :" (Art. xx.) In 
other words, she does not make Scripture the adequate 
rule of conscience ; but she gives us directions, not ex- 
pressed in Scripture, but deduced therefrom by anal- 
ogy, by inferences more or less remote, and by reasoning 
on Scriptural principles ; and provided she ordain no- 
thing which is contrary to God's word written, or 
which makes Scripture in one place repugnant to 
another, she considers the light thus acquired from 
Scripture to be a proper rule for the guidance of her 
members in many matters in regard to which, if left to 
themselves, they would be perplexed with doubts, or 
separated and estranged from one another by disagree- 
ments and dissensions. 

In this spirit, endeavoring to reconcile reason with 
authority and authority with reason, steadying herself 
by the judgment of the Universal Church, and yet re- 
taining nothing in contravention to Scripture, our 
Church has ruled many points of much practical im- 
portance. She has retained a liturgy and forms of 
prayer ; infant baptism, the religious observance of the 
Lord's Day and other Holy Days ; an outward com- 
mission (as well as an inward call) to the Gospel Min- 
istry ; the reception of the Holy Communion kneeling, 
and other things of less moment. These practices had 
been of long standing, and as they were, to say the least, 
not repugnant to Scripture, she had reason to expect 



— 58 — 

that her members would acquiesce in her judgment 
respecting them. 

But unhappily a different spirit soon began to pre- 
vail. Believing very justly in the perfection of Scrip- 
ture, but forgetting that Scripture, like every other 
good gift, could only be perfect in its kind, men began 
to think that nothing ought to be done for which a 
text of Scripture could not be produced. Human 
laws, even in things indifferent, must be repealed; 
rites and usages which could not be justified by Scrip- 
ture precept must be banished from the Church, and 
all things must be adjusted to the standard of Scripture 
or "evangelical purity." In other words, everything 
must be discarded and rejected which had not express 
warrant of Scripture in its favor. In effect, these men 
would have Scripture for an adequate rule not only of 
faith, but of conscience. The confusion and extrava- 
gancies, the wild opinions and wilder practices which 
have sprung from this error have been such as to beggar 
description ; and though the error itself now finds no 
patron, yet its effects are still to be seen in the liveries 
and badges of conflicting sects. 

One ill effect of the disregard of the light which 
has been acquired from Scripture by the meditation 
and labors of the great and good in all ages of the 
Church, and which is preserved to us in the judgment 
and usages of the Universal Church, is the want of a 
public opinion grounded on Scripture. If in some 
countries the intellect and conscience have been para- 
lyzed by the undue elevation of authority and the de- 
pression of reason, it is equally true, I apprehend, that 
in other countries the understanding has become in- 
toxicated, and the conscience perverted by the undue 



— 59 — 

elevation of reason and the depression of authority. 
Too many seem to fancy that one's own reason is the 
measure of all reason, and to have neither the modesty 
nor the sense, either in civil or religious matters to 
steady their own judgment by the fundamental laws of 
their country, or the judgment of the Church. They are 
puffed up with reason, they are " mad with reason," and 
have come to think it no shame but an honor, no proof of 
folly but a proof of the brilliancy of genius, to arraign 
the constitution of their country and the judgment of 
the Church, at the bar of their own reason, and to de- 
no ance the one and deride the other in every point in 
which they differ from their own crude and untutored 
notions of rights and liberties. Hence distraction and 
discord in the Church, on matters not perhaps essential 
but of grave importance ; and hence, too, those horri- 
ble perversions of Scripture which throw a cloud of 
deep darkness over its precepts of subordination and 
charity, and seek to draw fuel from its holy pages for 
the most malignant passions of the human heart. The 
pernicious notion that error can do no harm while 
truth is left free to combat it (as if incendiarism can 
do no harm while there is water enough in the ocean 
to quench the fires it kindles,) by deadening the sense 
of responsibility for its utterance and circulation, in- 
tensifies the evil. Public opinion, in this way, loses 
the elements of sound Christian doctrine, and becomes 
like "the sea with its troubled waves." Instead of ex- 
erting a salutary restraint on the erratic propensities 
of the human mind, it warms them into life and activ- 
ity, until it becomes itself little more than a confusion 
of isms. Coercive authority, except in extreme cases, 
and when demanded by imperious necessity, is not the 



60 



way to restrain this evil ; it is apt rather to exasperate 
and to aggravate it ; but our own Church, if I mistake 
not, is a witness, that the rash and presumptuous tem- 
per which is the main source of the evil, might be 
avoided, and a sober and humble temper be substitut- 
ed in its place, if Christians would learn to study 
Scripture in the light of antiquity ; in things in* 
different and non-essential, to yield their own judg- 
ment to the judgment and practice of the Universal 
Church ; and to be guided in the public worship of 
God, by a liturgy which is the fruit of her collective 
wisdom. 

One word, in conclusion, as to the sanctions of the 
revealed law : 

If conscience were obliged by no other rule than 
the light of nature, we might put heaven and hell out 
of sight, and look for no other reward than the ap- 
proval of conscience, no severer punishment than its 
stings and reproaches. But this is not our condition 
under the Gospel of Christ, but it is that condition of 
nature from which the Gospel has delivered us. The 
light of natural reason is insufficient to bring us to a 
supernatural end ; but it is a supernatural end, even 
eternal blessedness in heaven, which God in His infi- 
nite mercy has been pleased to propose to us. To this 
end He has given us supernatural means ; viz., such a 
revelation of His will as He sees fit to enable us to at- 
tain the end proposed to us. Under this gracious dis- 
pensation we not only learn by faith in God's Word, 
many things which we could not learn from the light 
of nature, but even those moral duties which nature 
teaches us we are encouraged to practise from a higher 
motive, the love of God ; and for nobler ends, the 



61 



glory of God and the salvation of our souls. The 
same revelation which excites us to obedience by the 
hopes of heaven, warns us that disobedience, unless 
atoned for by repentance, will be visited with eternal 
damnation. We Christians, therefore, to whom the 
will of God is revealed, are not only obliged to dis- 
charge all the duties of morality under a sense of 
those sanctions with which nature accompanies them, 
bat to remember that they are bound on our con- 
sciences by those everlasting rewards and punishments 
which are to be dispensed in the great and dreadful 
Day of Judgment. For which, may God in His mercy 
prepare us all, through His Son Jesus Christ ; to 
whom, &c. 



THE END. 



IP A: irl 860 



THE SUPREMACY 


AXD 


OBLIGATION OF CONSCIENCE: 


CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE 


OPPOSITE ERRORS OF ROMANISM AXD 


PROTESTANTISM. 


BY TITK 


REV. SAMUEL SEABURY, D.D., 


SECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE A N X 1 S C I A T I X , NEW YORK 


^*+ 


c v y " 


NEW YORK: 


DANIEL DANA; JR., 381 BROADWAY. 


I860. 



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